Criminals' local habits could help them get nicked

That old TV cliché of determining the baddies' hideout by mapping out the crimes of a serial criminal on a giant wall and drawing lines to find the point at which they dissect may not be as far-fetched as it first seems.

According to research by psychologists at the University of Leicester, criminals have distinctive patterns when it comes to committing crimes and by correlating the targeted locations the police can apprehend the person responsible based on their predictable localised behaviour.

Using data from Northamptonshire Police, researcher and PhD student Matthew Tonkin found that car thieves, robbers and burglars tended to commit crimes in 'local haunts' and that the patterns were distinctive enough to differentiate offenders.

"The locations of crime aren't just an irrelevant consequence of crime; they can tell us very important information about who is responsible and which crimes are the work of the same person." Tonkin said. "Crucially, however, our study shows that these findings extend across different types of crime."

It is hoped that the research -- which will be presented to the public on 24 June -- will eventually lead to a system that will allow police forces to reliably determine which crimes are linked and who the most likely culprit is.

Perhaps the scriptwriters of Frost and Taggart were onto something after all.

Edited by Duncan Geere

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